Pages

Sunday, 31 July 2011

We are glad to announce that we have launched a special page :the funerary chamber of the mastaba of Mereruka.

http://www.osirisnet.net/mastabas/mererouka/e_mereruka_07.htm

So now, the presentation of this gigantic mastaba is complete, with its three different sections: * The mastaba of Mereruka himself :http://www.osirisnet.net/mastabas/mererouka/e_mereruka_01.htmto which we have added the big and well preserved funeral chamber. * The mastaba of his wife Watetkhetor :http://www.osirisnet.net/mastabas/watetkhethor/e_watetkhethor_01.htm* The mastaba of his son, Meryteti:www.osirisnet.net/mastabas/meryteti/e_meryteti_01.htm

Saturday, 30 July 2011

According to this article tens of thousands of people demonstrated, can we just put this in perspective. Egypt is a country of 80-90 million so the entire country is being judged by the actions of 0.001 percent of the population. Could we please have some responsible reporting. BBC News - Egypt uprising: Islamists lead Tahrir Square rally: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Friday, 29 July 2011

I have written about Ramadan in Luxor and what a great time it is, here is a Cairo view. The Ramadan Guide for Expats in Cairo - City Life Feature - Cairo 360: "It’s that time of the year again where Cairo turns into a kaleidoscope of lights and glitter. The holy month of Ramadan is here; the most important time of the year for Muslims worldwide. For expats or tourists who have never experienced Ramadan before and don’t know what to expect, it all might be a bit intimidating. Although most nightclubs close during Ramadan and alcohol is completely prohibited, Ramadan is the most exciting month of the year in Egypt with lots of food, gatherings and activities. Egyptians after all wouldn’t be Egyptians if they didn’t find a reason to celebrate; Ramadan is no exception to that.

Thursday, 28 July 2011

Normally shisha in Egypt costs 5-20LE. Can you believe it a restaurant charged 200LE, yes nearly $50 USD for shisha. The poor tourist was really ripped off as he had 2, didn't ask the price before hand. Disgraceful

:)

The tourist in question was my hubby on his own in London, he had a shisha in Edgware Road lol. Now he knows how we feel ROFL

Sunday, 24 July 2011

If you want to join an Egyptology Society near Leicester here are the details. If another society wants to use me for publicity please email me. Leicester Ancient Egypt Society: "Welcome to the online home of the Leicester Ancient Egypt Society.

We meet most months at the New Walk Museum in Leicester, where you can expand your knowledge of Ancient Egypt. Hear about the art, architecture, religious beliefs, the intrigues of the Pharaohs and the lives of the ordinary people. Learn about new discoveries from experts in the field.

The guest lecturers are usually professional Egyptologists with a national or international reputation, and all are experienced speakers. Their talks are designed for the non expert audience, and so no one need feel that they would be out of their depth at our meetings.

The talks are usually illustrated and the lecturers will normally take questions, which can lead to stimulating debate! The meetings are informal and usually end with refreshments when members of the audience may have the opportunity of chatting with the guest speaker.

The ‘Schedule’ page lists the speakers for the year, while details and benefits of joining Leicester Ancient Egypt Society are on the ‘Membership’ page.

"Zahi Hawass, one of Egypt's top archaeologists, symbolises the point where our proud and glorious past intersects with a bleak and uncertain present. In the mind of many Egyptians he is associated with Egypt's modern corrupt rulers rather than the great pharaohs of ancient times.

In Arabic, the word 'pharaoh' always has positive connotations except when it's used to describe an absolute and ruthless ruler or manager. This is exactly the kind of pharaoh Hawass was in the eyes of many of his compatriots.

Since Hosni Mubarak's departure from office, protests that demanded the removal of Hawass from his position as minister of antiquities were uninterrupted. These were held by fellow archaeologists, the guards of heritage sites, or simply Tahrir Square protesters who see him as an antiquity that they have no interest in embalming from the era of Egypt's latest pharaoh, Mubarak. This pressure has yielded results and Hawass did lose the job he was offered during the 18-day revolution in a cabinet shuffle that aimed, but failed, to calm down angry anti-Mubarak protesters.

If Egyptian archaeology was a country, then certainly Hawass would be its Mubarak. Just like his former boss, he is besieged by allegations about his business interests, accusations of turning Egypt's archaeology into a one-man show by claiming credit for scientific findings and being the sole speaker about Egyptology in the local and international media. Of course, he's also committed the unforgivable sin of being one of Mubarak's favourite men.

Hawass is the epitome of the kind of self-centred, egocentric and possibly charismatic figure that the revolution has risen against, along with the kind of Mubarak-era politics he used to symbolise. Even though he's been called Egypt's Indiana Jones, the name that probably describes him best is his very own, Zahi, which means vain or conceited in Arabic.

Evidence of his narcissistic personality is not difficult to find. In April he launched a clothing line named after himself in Harrods, and his last book, A Secret Voyage, is Egypt's most expensive book ever, carrying a price tag of 22,000 Egyptian pounds (about £2,300) with only 750 copies printed, and all signed by Egyptian archaeologists.

With his rock-star attitude, Hawass might have managed to bring archaeology more into the headlines – not necessarily because of his fine discoveries or first-class research, but mainly because of his rather eccentric behaviour. Even though the man was, or made himself, synonymous with Egyptian archaeology in the minds of many, whoever succeeds Hawass is certainly not going to be the media sensation he managed to be. Hawass will be missed by journalists searching for colourful and amusing stories, but unlike his ancestors, this pharaoh's mystique might be short-lived as a symbol of an unpopular bygone era in Egypt's history.

The sacking of Hawass, Egypt's latest victim of the revolution, shows that the 18-day revolution was only the mother of numerous baby revolutions against little pharaohs or mini-Mubaraks in ministries, universities, factories, political parties and so on, and his departure marks another victory for those trying to clear the country of its deep-rooted authoritarianism.

The antipathy toward Hawass in Egypt may be difficult to grasp in the West, where he is typically found on American television, fearlessly tracking down desert tombs, unearthing mummies and bringing new life to Egypt’s dusty past. But in Egypt he has been a target of anger among young protesters who helped depose President Hosni Mubarak in February. Hawass had been accused of corruption, shoddy science and having uncomfortably close connections with the deposed president and first lady⎯all of which he has vociferously denied.

In a statement, the secretariat said Banna, a restoration specialist, does not specialize in archaeology and should not assume the ministry's responsibilities.

The statement called for dissolving the Antiquities Ministry and returning its responsibilities to the council, which it said would act as an independent, scientific institute run by specialists.

The decision to establish the ministry was made by Hosni Mubarak, a mistake that should be reversed in the public's interest, the statement said. Archaeological work is managed according to the law that protects monuments, not the authority of a minister, it added.

Archaeologists will strike if Banna is not removed, council Secretary General Mohamed Abdel Maksoud warned.

The rejection is not related to Banna's disputes with former Antiquities Minister Zahi Hawass, Maksoud said.

Sunday, 17 July 2011

Egypt’s Zahi Hawass resigns - Bikya Masr: "CAIRO: According to local reports, Egypt’s minister of antiquities Zahi Hawass has resigned his post. The move came as Prime Minister Essam Sharaf informed the country’s well-known Egyptologist that he would not be continuing on in his position.

Egyptian daily newspaper al-Youm al-Saba’a also reported that upon hearing the news, angry archaeologists, who had been camped out in front of the ministry, allegedly chased the embattled minister throughout the streets before his bodyguards were able to get Hawass into a taxi.

The move comes after a series of Bikya Masr articles detailing Hawass’ transgressions as a minister and the widespread anger and resentment over his continued position as minister. The New York Times also recently published an article that detailed the man’s large financial sums he takes from international publications in order to appear on their television programs.

Hawass had been pushing for the return of all Egyptian artifacts to the country during his time as Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, which became the ministry of antiquities during a reshuffle of the Cabinet by former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in early February in an attempt to appease protests against the 31-year-old regime.

Last month, the now former minister won an appeal against an earlier conviction over a dispute with a Cairo bookstore.

Hawass nor the ministry have yet to make an official statement, although a number of sources say that Abdel Fattah al-Banna has been appointed to take over the ministry.

Just picked this up on Facebook, Nigel Hetherington has posted "Dr Zahi Hawass, Minister of State for Antiquities has just announced his resignation with immediate effect. Its direct from the Ministry, Breaking news, you will have to wait for official press release"

Nigel is well known in media and Egyptology circles and based in Cairo so does get news early.

Friday, 15 July 2011

The new governor of Luxor is making a real effort to improve Luxor and one of his initiatives was to have a meeting with ex-pats living here to find out their views. The first meeting was Wednesday night which I missed as I had guests arriving but the follow-up meeting was today. General Khaled Fouda explained exactly who he is, his military background and experience, he had spent sometime in the US and although his English was not bad he had a translator there as well. He has been in Luxor 2 ½ months and is very happy to be here.

On Wednesday he had been asked if he would still be in position after the autumn elections and he said he would (personally I am not sure how he can say that).

At the moment he is concentrating on complete certain projects started by the last governor Sphinx Alley, the Corniche, the area behind the Sheraton, the Cultural Palace and the Olympic Swimming pool. These are all scheduled to open 30th October. There were lots of other project but he is concentrating on those .

He wants • to restart something called tourist friend which stopped in 1990• change the behaviour on the streets, the hassle, but he did point out that at the moment this is driven by hunger and extreme poverty because of the lack of tourists• education is the key and he will start with the schools, children need to be taught to respect their country and take pride in itA number of points were raised from the floor which he responded to• Pollution of waterways and streets with rubbish• The main rubbish dump was being poorly maintained and there was fly tipping• Recycling• The police are not active, he has a meeting planned and wishes to get them back to pre revolution standards• New work opportunities were being made at Tod, north Karnak and Esna. There will be a boat marina north of the Hilton• Traffic rules and regulations to be enforced• Caleches to display their licence• Hassle • Treatment of Animals, both Brook and Ace operate in Luxor and a representative of Ace was at the meeting and gave the governor an information pack and invited him to visit. The governor is a pet lover and has many animals. Ace invited anyone to visit their centre and see their workThere is a major clear up of Luxor taking place on Sunday at 9am, please assemble at Abu Haggag square if you want to help. Equipment and free hats and t-shirt will be available. This is taking place Armant, Esna and all over Luxor. The meeting raised an important point that the men who are paid to do this job need to understand they are not losing their jobs and this was to help them. The waterways as well as the streets are included in the clean up.

The Governor has a Twitter account khaled_foda and an email account luxor_governorate@yahoo.com

The foreigner advice office is under construction and details will be announced on Facebook

Thursday, 14 July 2011

Tomorrow Luxor is celebrating the moulid of Abu Haggag. A Moulid, meaning birthday in Arabic, is a celebration of a holy person and in Egypt these celebrations are held for saints of both the Islamic and Christian faiths. Most are Islamic and are governed by the Lunar Islamic Calendar. Though many consider these not to be proper customs, they are nevertheless popular traditions of the people. Probably the most important Muslim celebration is the Moulid el-Naby (the Prophet's birthday), which along with a number of other important Moulids is celebrated throughout Egypt. However, many others are more local in nature, such as the Moulid of Abu al-Haggag (Sheikh Yusuf al-Haggag) which is held in Luxor, where a mosque dedicated to him and dating to the 13th century may be found incorporated into the ancient Temple of Luxor.Known as the Father of the Pilgrimage, al-Haggag was born in Damascus around 1150 AD and moved to Mecca in his forties before finally settling in Egypt. Yusuf al-Haggag lived many years in Luxor, establishing a zawiyah, before dying there in 1245 AD. Many of his descendents still live in the area.According to local legend, the mosque of his name in the Temple of Luxor was probably not established by him. However, when a local official decided to rid the ancient temple of this mosque, Abu al-Haggag attempted to stop him. The government official nevertheless insisted that it be moved. Just before the mosque was to be torn down, however, the official woke up one morning to find that he could not move his body and apparently believing this to be the work of Abu al-Haggag, decided to change his mind about moving the mosque. Ever since then, the people of Luxor have had a special fondness for him and their mosque. His Moulid usually occurs 3 weeks before the start of Ramadan.

A combination of religion and entertainment, attending these festivals gives you a real picture of Egyptian life. These are local events, not put on for the tourists, although you are welcome to join in. The one celebrates a local Luxor saint and a great occasion for young and old alike. The children wear party hats which on closer inspection are made from crisp packets and other packing. They are very colourful and contain a noisy whistle contributing to the over all sound which is deafening.

The Moulid (feast) of Abu Haggag happens before Ramadan every year, and is wonderful fun. For days the streets of East Luxor have been filling with multi-coloured stalls selling sweets and toys and party hats, and tonight the town was jammed with revelers. There were impromptu bands playing on street corners, troupes of zikr dancers performing in booths along the roadside, crowds of people listening to itinerant preachers, children running around throwing firecrackers at each other. It was fascinating to witness, and to be part of. Everyone looked so impressive, the old men in their best galabeyas, the young children in their party hats.

The great thing about working in Egypt is that its contemporary culture is every bit as rich and vibrant and fulfilling as its ancient one."The procession has floats from many different guilds; here the boat guild and they are cheerfully bombarded with chickpeas, coins and water by the crowd.

Every float is accompanied by either canned or live music. This tends to that of the region and you can hear Nubian and Saidi songs. The whole town and surrounding district make it a day to remember. A family might save up all year in order to hire a caleche to be a part of the procession. Or they might decorate a camel.

Although horse races are a part of the event, which stretches over several days you can also watch young men spurring their horses up and down before the main procession startsThe procession starts in the afternoon and once it gets going there is float after float with huge crowds accompanying each float. The many guilds include everyone from the felucca people to bakers to musicians,There a serious part to the festivities as the idea is to be blessed by the saint as the procession passes by.If you search the blog you can read articles about the recent restoration of the mosque.

A couple of points I picked up was that the decoration in KV5 is mainly lost as it was painted on plaster on the limestone and most of the plaster is lost. Chamber 5 has been stablised. The last work of Susan Weeks is published.

Monday, 4 July 2011

Good luck to Andie and Kate, a great new initiative Egyptological: Explore Ancient Egypt in our free online magazine.: "Egyptological is a free publication which offers papers, articles, brief items, reviews and reports, all discussing the rich world of Ancient Egypt. Our authors represent a variety of backgrounds and interests and produce some very diverse content. Egyptological is fully searchable with a complete archive of all items published on the site. Issues will be published every two to three months. We hope that you enjoy it.

Egyptological is divided into three main sections to enable you to find the type of content that you are looking for: Journal, Magazine and Colloquy. To find out more about what you will find in the sections and how they are organized, see our About page.

To see information about our latest editions please see our Editorial page. At any one time we have a number of new submissions in the pipeline. See Egyptological News for details of plans for future issues and news about developments on the website.

At the end of each article, review and report you will find that there is a Comment facility enabling you to add your thoughts and ideas in response to what you have read. Don’t be shy – jump in and have your say! The more voices and opinions the better.

We are always looking for new contributors so if you are interested in writing for us or adding photographs please have a look at our Participate section where you will find full details.

We recommend that you view Egyptological in either Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome browsers, for which the site is optimized. Older browser versions may not display the site correctly. In line with Google’s recent decision, we do not support Internet Explorer 7, Safari 3, Firefox 3.5 or their predecessors

We hope that you enjoy Egyptological and look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sunday, 3 July 2011

This week, during their routine excavation work, the French-Egyptian archaeological team working at the Karnak Temple in Luxor uncovered two major monuments. The first is the wall that once enclosed the New Kingdom temple of the god Petah and the second is a gate dated back to the reign of 25th dynasty King Shabaka (712-698 BC).

Christophe Tiers, director of the Karnak French mission, said that the mission has also unearthed a number of engraved blocks from the Petah temple. During the restoration process, archaeologists realised that the blocks date to the reign of King Tuthmosis III (1479-1425 BC) which means that the construction of the temple started under Egyptian rule and not during the Ptolemaic dynasty as was previously thought.

Ptolemaic mud brick walls which surrounded the temple were also uncovered.

Dominique Vebale, professor at the faculty of archaeology at the Sorbonne, said that French restorers are now carrying out comprehensive work to reconstruct the temple and open it to the public next year.

She pointed out the gate of King Shabaka is a very distinguished gate that once closed off the jewellery hall of the king. It is decorated with distinguished Egyptian paintings and is very well preserved.

Among the paintings is a scene depicting the king offering the justice sign of Maat to the god Amun Re.

Mansour Boreih, general supervisor of the Luxor monuments, asserted that the Karnak Temple has not yet been completely uncovered and is still hiding more of its historical secrets.

Friday, 1 July 2011

Here is a non Egyptology Luxor experience for both men and women, shaving and threading. Muslims have rules abou hair removal and have got quite good at it. Men go to a barber regularly and get a cut throat shave and then have a process called threading to trim the eyebrows and remove the tiny hairs on the face like cheeks, ears and nose. Ladies also have this threading. If you are not used to it the first time is really painful but after a while you get used to it and I really enjoy the clean feeling it gives.

Anyway a recent guest persuaded his brother to be done. Now this guest comes regularly to Egypt, is very used to the process and relaxed about it. Here is the hairy before picture,

Then the shave

Then the threading, notice no screams

All very simple, then we got his brother in the chair. OMG this the funniest. I filmed the entire process. We knew it would end in tears, tears of laughter for us and tears of pain for him. If you check out the video he is nice and relaxed until about 7:50 mins and then the threading starts. The laughter is from his loving family and girlfriend . (and me the barber and my cleaner)

but don’t worry he does get his revenge. This is ladies threading mind you although she suffered it was not as much as her fella.

Here is a non Egyptology Luxor experience for both men and women, shaving and threading. Muslims have rules abou hair removal and have got quite good at it. Men go to a barber regularly and get a cut throat shave and then have a process called threading to trim the eyebrows and remove the tiny hairs on the face like cheeks, ears and nose. Ladies also have this threading. If you are not used to it the first time is really painful but after a while you get used to it and I really enjoy the clean feeling it gives.

Anyway a recent guest persuaded his brother to be done. Now this guest comes regularly to Egypt, is very used to the process and relaxed about it. Here is the hairy before picture,

Then the shave

Then the threading, notice no screams

All very simple, then we got his brother in the chair. OMG this the funniest. I filmed the entire process. We knew it would end in tears, tears of laughter for us and tears of pain for him. If you check out the video he is nice and relaxed until about 7:50 mins and then the threading starts. The laughter is from his loving family and girlfriend . (and me the barber and my cleaner)

but don’t worry he does get his revenge. This is ladies threading mind you although she suffered it was not as much as her fella.

Featured post

UK - co-owner of Flats in Luxor Group. British in origin, Egyptian at heart. First visited Egypt in 1979 and finally got to move here in 2003. Been there, done it and got the t-shirt(IT Consultant, PCG Chairman, ex cult member). Finally living my dream: Egyptology (doing an online Egyptology course at Manchester Uni), sunshine, cold beer and Mahmoud. What more could a girl want?